~To the Moon~

~To the Moon~

My well overdue homage to Johnny and River from the "To the Moon" RPG indy game (2011), created by Freebird Games studio. It's a rather short masterpiece that moved me in so many ways with its intriguing storyline, which is presented backwards with plenty of turns and twists in a classic 16-bit pixel art.

The game music is yet another masterpiece that beautifully sets the tone, pace, and mood at all the right places. Even though the events happen in a hypotetical future, the plot and characters are quite believable and lovable in their own ways. I found myself laughing and crying throughout most of the short while the game lasted - up to the last minute. Crying like a baby!

Many will claim this is not really a game, even though it looks like an RPG. It's basically about executing simple actions that will unlock the next part of the story. At first it takes a little while to pick up the pace, but once it does, it manages to make us care for the characters and what will happen to them.

Interestingly enough, we don't play neither John nor River, but instead doctors Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts. I won't give any spoilers about the brilliantly executed story, but it's enough to say that it's an emotional roller coaster - even if it only lasts for about 5 hours. Only a hearless monster wouldn't be moved by it. The plot evokes a wide range of emotions, like compassion, laugh, fear, sadness, indignation, enderament, and even conflicting emotions few other stories could bring out so well.

As it sometimes happens with indy games, the story, game design and music were all created by a single one-army-man, Kan Gao, using RPG Maker. This is to show that the tool doesn't make the artist - a masterpiece was created with a generic program.

Figures are both Nearme, rendered in Poser with Firefly. Hope you like it and thanks for coming by!